Watercolor illustration by Sasha Baranovskaya

Backed by the death-march drumbeat and the guitars writhing like furious ghosts, Ian Curtis sings, moans and spells out a key or two on his imminent suicide especially in the lyric “Turn on your TV, turn down your pulse, turn away from it all, it’s all getting too much.”

That world around you, all dark and hollow, without meaning or context, without hope, as dry as a desert. It holds you around its frosty hands, feeling thin, painful. Noise was dull, food was tasteless, days were long and nights, sleepless; home was horror and tomorrow seems unlikely.

The first time, the sombre time, when you try to kill yourself, imagining how your funeral will be like, fantasizing about it in tremendous detail. 

Of course, the entire event will take place to “Bookends Theme” by Simon and Garfunkel. This is very important. Although a half-baked concept, the idea is in fact very tempting. You will feel nothing. To feel nothing, that’s the goal, isn’t it? You missed it.

You don’t really want to die. You just want to get away.

The second time, more elaborate and mature effort, you attempt to slit your wrist using a razor you use to shave. Probably you just missed all the internet “tips” on how to do this “right”. Can’t even bloody die when you want to.

You’re an idiot; you tell yourself, all covered in blood.

Clinical depression like an amplifier in your brain, taking black and screaming it red, stripping you of yesterday’s joys and depriving you of tomorrow’s. You tell your sister, she demands that you tell your mother. You do.

Now, you have a therapist. His blank stare and his emotionless words, “You need to learn to love yourself first”. You cannot love yourself because you just want to tell him, scream at his vacant face that you imagine yourself differently, living as a different person, who isn’t repulsive and terrible and worthless. You want to tell that guy, you just want to cut and cut yourself up till nothing is left of you; not an atom. You want to tell him that it’s been quite a time since you’ve been so depressed that you don’t know what to feel except the burning, nauseous feeling in your chest that only stops when you sleep. You don’t want to be here, you want to get out of this hospital, go somewhere, to a better place. Your parents are sitting in the room, looking all tearful and betrayed.

You realize you come from a tradition of sad people. Your dad is sad and an insomniac, your mom is sad because your dad is sad, and your sister is sad and apprehensive because she is not getting good grades in spite of her hard work. So, this is what you are. A sad guy in a sad family. You realize you’ve lost the ability to feel anything: happiness, sadness or even, anger.

At the beginning of your depression, there was nothing but feelings, so now the emotional numbing was relief. You’ve always scrutinized feelings as a hindrance to your quest of completely overpowering yourself. How is that working out? You are fully aware that different things are happening with you but they don’t feel so different, do they? This in turn, gives rise to a mournful, bittersweet boredom. The only few feelings left around were waiting, waiting intently now, to die and join the other carcasses in the wilderness of your dreaded soul.  But there’s nothing you can do now. You feel comforted. Or do you?

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Parth Jawale, a staunch proponent of Camus’ philosophy of Absurdism, is currently pursuing his Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Engineering. A music aficionado and a movie buff, he occasionally summons the metaphorical ‘pen’ and vents it all out.

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